Although I use this particular product in my home offices, Pavé Life and our subsidiaries will no longer be using HP products of any kind. This has been an enormously inconvenient situation and will not be putting up with this in the offices.

Your manual states that it should be able to print without having to have ALL the ink in place as a previous poster mentioned. However your product does not meet those requirements nor does it mention that this may not be applicable to your current product. False advertising is a suable offense.

I too came across this very problem today, so I went out to buy more black ink thinking that would resolve my problem. But I get all the way home ready to print and find out that I need to go replace all my color ink too just to be able to print a greyscale doc?!?! HP YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF. I will NEVER buy your printer products again and be sure to tell all 500 of my FB friends to do the same. Word of mouth in this day and age is no longer just two degrees of separation. Social media can hurt my friends. I'm so pissed off about this. On top of the fact that your ink doesn't last for 20 printed pages??! RIDICULOUS. Horrible, horrible customer service. I'm so done with HP.

Kind of defeats the purpose of having separate color cartridges, doesn't it? I thought that was such a great thing and I could replace only the cartridges that were used. Mine has never worked without four brand new cartridges. Total scam.

This answer strikes me as PURE BULL. I used to have an 870 printer and it worked fine for years. I had it set to print in B+W, never used color, and at certain points the color cartridges dried ip. I'm sure there are lots of printer users who print in B+W ONLY. That means that your answer is EVASIVE. It avoids/evades the question "why couldn't HP have designed a printer that did not require a workg color cartridge?" You may add my name to the list of folks who will never again purchase HP products. And even more significant, you may add me to the list of folks who, when I happen to be in a store that sells HP products, such as Staples, glances over at the printer section, and if I see someone lookg at printers, I tell them of my experiences. And I will shortly be taking other steps as well to warn people.

Shame on you HP. There is no reason a person should not be able to print in blank and white when a color cartridge is empty. Greedy move. You are moving backwards instead of forward if you blame this on technology!!!!!

Note that there are quite a few complaints here about the 6100 printer and the color printing situation. I cannot imagine any way this printer actually knows how much ink is left in any cartridge. The price of these printers is just not high enough (it seems to me) to support some kind of "flowing ink detection system". Nor do I think it is true that the color cartridges are needed for "alighment". I keep my printer on all day, day after day, and I have it set to print in B+W. In other words, HP, THOSE COLOR INK CARTRIDGES ARE NEVER USED, PERIOD. And presumably this machine is designed so that when the printer is idle, there is some mechanism that prevents ink from drying. And perhaps the worst part of this whole situation is this: the answers from HP just do not strike me as reflecting the true situation. Yet, HP expects people to swallow this nonsense they are putting out!

The two designs are the "Individual Ink Cartridge"(IIC) (the 6100 type), and (2) Integrated Print Head (IPH).

The article has a number of headings. The next-to-last heading is called "User Choice" In the very last sentence of the last paragraph immediately prior to that "User Choice" heading, HP explains that Individual Ink Cartridge (IIC) printers (such as the 6100),require that all cartridges, including color, must be in the printer for printer maintenance. The entire article explains how IIC printers use ink, & color ink, for all linds of functions other than printing, such as maintenance. The Integrated Print Head (the more square-sized type of ink cartridges, rather than the thin IIC's), do not have this kind of function & limitation, because they do not need this kind of ink-intensive maintenance, since the print head is within the cartridge itself, not within the printer, and can replaced when the ink cartridge is replaced. Also, since the Integrated Print Head ink cartridge can be replaced without trashing the entire printer, ink consumption does not have to be used for maintenance, since it is not crucial to preserve the print head inside the printer, which is the case with the IIC design cartridges. Also, in a printer with an Integrated Print Head, the printer's black ink cartridge can be used even if the color ink is empty, because the color cartridge's are not used for maintenance, and so can be empty without injuring the printer, since the print heads are within the cartridge, not within the printer itself.

So there is no way to alter the massive ink consumption, even color ink consumption, of the 6100, since it is an IIC design printer, even if you never prInt in color.

It would be nice if HP had posted this explanatory link in this community forum, rather than the ridiculous posts of its tech people.

Also, it would be nice if HP disclosed this whole voracious ink-design schemer up front to its purchasers. But then to disclose it would mean less purchaseRs and less $$$ for HP. Despicable.